Who is a basketball fan? I am a huge Duke fan and anxiously await every March for the basketball season!Usually I get to go to some round 1 or 2 games but this year will have to be satisfied with the TV!

March Madness reminds me of SOA in the real world. March madness is all about people, information and process -- just like SOA! The people the fans are critical to the game. They sometimes mean the difference between success and failure! In SOA, the people and human workflows are critical to the success of an implementation. Building composite applications and being able to easily leverage standard and reusable business services and present them to the right users at the right time! How value to your business!

For Information, in basketball understanding and knowing the stats and the strengths and weaknesses of your oponent is crucial to success. Just like in SOA. Having the right quality of information about your customers, or your products gives you a competitive leg up and SOA can help you separate information from implementation for reuse across the enterprise, centralize maintenance and control to improve data quality, and Provide processes with consistent information, in real-time, regardless of location.

And finally Processes -- the rules of the game! You must follow the process in order to win! You need to be flexible in your game to stay within the bonds. Just as our customer survey shows, Process , or BPM is crucial to success in SOA. It aligns the business and IT together and drives toward a common end goal!

What are your thoughts? Who is watching March Madness? Who is doing SOA?[Read More]

Good day to all! Well, this southern girl broke her ankle about 2 weeks ago! Since there can be no "weight bearing on that leg now" for a while, I started thinking about where we put our weight in our first SOA implementations! From our recent survey, most companies are viewing BPM capablilities are the highest rating SOA capability. BPM being Business Process management. BPM is how you design, automate, and manage operational business processes at the pace required by changing market conditions and business priorities, aligned with strategic and operational goals. The value comes in around your ability to adapt quickly and cost effectively. By deploying the right BPM tooling, infrastructure, and methods, you will be able to respond at the speed of business while maintaining business controls and, where necessary, regulatory compliance. BPM improves your bottom line and enables innovation, helping you to compete effectively and win. Gartner recently gave a Market Opportunity number of $806M in 2006. Business Process Management Suites will be the Next Big Thing, February 2005, Jim Sinur

I am curious how many of our SOA folks are leveraging this capability of BPM and what processes are top of your list?